MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thank you everyone for coming this morning. I particularly want to thank representatives from the College of General Practitioners, the Australian Nursing Midwifery Federation, APNA - the Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association, and NACCHO, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, who are four organisations who play such a critical role in the delivery of quality health care in our country.
Our Strengthening Medicare agenda is built on three pillars: more doctors and nurses, more bulk billing and more urgent care clinics. I said at the last election that it was never harder to find a doctor, never more expensive than it has been over the last few years, and that without action, it will simply get harder and harder. The Government's own modelling shows that over the next decade, without action, we will be short about 70,000 nurses - 20,000 of them in the primary care sector - and about 5,500 GPs. General practice, when we came to government, was in its most parlous state it had been in the history of Medicare. That really reflected the freezing of the Medicare rebate for six years and a decade of neglect to Medicare. There were fewer junior doctors choosing general practice as their preferred career than there ever had been. Only a few decades earlier, as many as one in two junior doctors would choose to become specialist GPs, the rest would go into other specialties. That figure had dropped from one in two, to about one in seven. There were simply not enough primary care nurses working in general practice, and those who were, were not being used to their fullest potential. They weren't being asked or allowed to use all of their skills, their experience and their very significant training. Dawn Casey would talk to me about the shortages they had in the Aboriginal community controlled health sector of locally trained Aboriginal Health Workers and Aboriginal Health Practitioners.
We have started to turn this around. Over the past two years, around 18,000 new medical practitioners have come into our health care system. That's by far the highest number of new medical practitioners into the system in more than a decade. This year, I am particularly pleased that there are more junior doctors in general practice training than there ever has been in this country: more than 1,750 young junior doctors who have chosen general practice as their preferred career - a 10 per cent increase on the number last year, which was also a very high number. Already of the 500 Aboriginal Health Worker and Aboriginal Health Practitioner traineeships that we promised at the last election, 300 of them have been filled by NACCHO, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, with tailored training to ensure that they provide the best possible care to Aboriginal communities around Australia. And the scholarships program that we announced for nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives postgraduate training for nurses who wanted to take their training to the next level has been hugely oversubscribed, reflecting the thirst that so many of our half a million nurses, almost, have to take their training to the next level and specialise as nurse practitioners or endorsed midwives.
There is still enormous pressure in primary care and on general practice, but I was really pleased that the College's Health of the Nation Report that they released late last year, showed that the sentiment in the sector was starting to turnaround. Last year's report showed that GPs were more satisfied. They were happier at work. Importantly, last year's report showed that our existing general practice workforce was more likely to recommend general practice as a career to young doctors than they had been in previous years.
We also know that overseas trained doctors and nurses have always played a really important part of our health workforce. Particularly in rural and regional Australia, where locally trained doctors and nurses are a little harder to attract. And we've been busy over the last several months cutting red tape, to ensure that we can get doctors and nurses from comparable jurisdictions - jurisdictions where we know the training and the healthcare systems are broadly the same as Australia's systems - like the UK, New Zealand and Ireland, we can get those doctors and nurses into our system more quickly. We have heard too many stories of overseas trained doctors and nurses being recruited to jobs in Australia but spending months and months and months, after they arrive in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane, waiting in apartments to get through the red tape before they can actually hit the floor and start delivering terrific health care.
There is more to do, there is no question about that. I've been busy talking with these organisations, and with others, but particularly these four critically important organisations, as we lead into the next election, about what else we can do to strengthen Medicare. I've said that this is a decade-long task, not just dealing with the financial legacy of a decade of cuts and neglect, not only dealing with the legacy of COVID, which has really scarred our healthcare system, but reshaping Medicare to reflect the patient need of the 21st century – which is quite different to the patient needs of the 1980s when Bob Hawke and Neal Blewett first set up Medicare.
But critically, we want more information out there, particularly for young health professionals, but professionals more broadly in the system, about the value of working in primary care. It was remarkable to me to discover there's never been a public information campaign encouraging people to work in primary healthcare. State governments very regularly run advertising campaigns seeking to recruit doctors and nurses and other health professionals into their hospital system. Obviously, we as a Commonwealth do that in Defence and in other areas. Today, I'm delighted to launch the first ever advertising campaign to encourage young Australians to work in the incredibly rewarding but critically important area of primary health care. I might show a couple of those ads and then ask some of my colleagues to add to my remarks
ROYAL AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF GENERAL PRACTITIONERS, PRESIDENT, DR MICHAEL WRIGHT: Thank you, Minister, and we're really pleased to support this important initiative. We know that we need more GPs, to train more specialist GPs for communities all around the country. We also need to train more practice nurses. We also need more Aboriginal Health Workers. And we really need to grow the primary healthcare workforce, and for the value of what we do in primary care in communities all around Australia to be recognised. And thank you for launching the campaign.
AUSTRALIAN NURSING AND MIDWIFERY FEDERATION, FEDERAL SECRETARY, ANNIE BUTLER: I'm Annie Butler, Federal Secretary for the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. We really welcome this government initiative today, the first of its kind to boost the primary healthcare workforce. Our members work in every setting across the country: in aged care, in general practice, in hospitals, in public, in private hospitals, in emergency departments. The things that matter most to people: not being able to see a doctor in a timely way, crowded, overcrowded emergency departments, not getting proper access to care if you're out in a rural and remote community - especially in Indigenous communities. To fix these problems, those things that matter to people most, we need to fix the primary health care workforce. That's then going to flow across the system and lead to better health care for everyone. So, we really welcome this initiative today.
NATIONAL ABORIGINAL COMMUNITY CONTROLLED HEALTH ORGANISATION, DEPUTY CEO, DR DAWN CASEY PSM: So NACCHO and its community health services - around 130 around the country - really welcome this campaign. It follows on over the last couple of years of, collectively, all of us meeting in relation to Medicare improvement, HTA funding approvals. So the campaign is welcomed for our community controlled health services and the integrated team approach that we adopted when we first started out. So thank you, Minister.
AUSTRALIAN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE NURSES ASSOCIATION, PRESIDENT, KAREN BOOTH: Hi. I'm Karen Booth from the Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association, and I just wanted to say this is a fantastic opportunity. And for the first time, primary health care careers are being showcased, and we know that people’s health starts long before someone gets into hospital. From a nursing perspective, we need the right primary health care nurses, with the right skills, in the right place – and that's in the community. The opportunity that this campaign brings - it’s high energy - to revitalize the workforce, not just attracting nurses in, but helping to keep them there. And the energy that it brings, I hope, will also help to revitalise the current workforce. Thank you.
BUTLER: Thanks very much. Just before I take questions, can I just say that I've been made aware this morning of a video circulating in New South Wales, where it appears that a couple of health professionals in New South Wales Health uniform are indicating that they will not treat people from a particular country. Can I say how utterly disgusted and appalled I am at this video: it makes me sick to my stomach. As everyone behind me knows, it is the obligation of every single health professional to treat and care for whomever comes before you. The idea that you would single out a particular group in our community and indicate you wouldn't care for them, runs against every single principle in our healthcare system. At a time of unprecedented antisemitism in our country, this is a particularly sickening video. I've seen comments from the New South Wales Minister Ryan Park, and can I say I endorse them 100 per cent. I look forward to this New South Wales Health Inquiry happening quickly. And if it is indeed a couple of New South Wales Health staff who have done that, then the action that Ryan Park has foreshadowed against them is entirely appropriate.
JOURNALIST: Minister, have you spoken to Minister Park about that video?
BUTLER: No, I haven't: this was only brought to my attention, literally 10 or 15 minutes before we started this press conference. I have had his comments put in front of me, I entirely endorse them.
JOURNALIST: Should health workers taking similar action be stood down across country, if there are more instances of this kind of behaviour?
BUTLER: Let's go back to first principles: it has been a core principle in health care, not just in Australia, but for a very long period of time, for centuries, that you treat whoever comes before you. You do no harm, and you treat whoever comes before you, no matter what their race, their creed, their religion. That is just so core to the delivery of health care, and the professional ethos of the wonderful doctors, nurses, health professionals that we have in this country. The idea that a couple of health professionals would say that they refuse to treat someone because of their race, or because of their religion, runs contrary to the most fundamental principle of health care.
JOURNALIST: Minister, when will the Government announce a decision on private health insurance premiums? Will it be before the caretaker period of the election?
BUTLER: I'm very confident it will be before the caretaker period of the election. I have written back to some of the insurers only, I think, very late last week – from memory – asking them to resubmit their applications for premium rises for 2025. From memory, I asked that response be delivered late this week, or very early next week. I think I'll be in a position to make that decision relatively soon. I want to make the decision as soon as I possibly can, so that insurers are able to put in place arrangements, and members are obviously alive to what is happening.
I'm sorry, a division has been called. Do you have a really hard question, just as a quick one?
JOURNALIST: If you could, doctors have proposed an $1 billion expansion of bulk billing. Will the government announce measures for patients other than children and pensioners?
BUTLER: The College of GPs and I talked very closely in the lead up to our landmark decision to triple the bulk billing incentive. They described it as a “game changer” when we did it, and it has turned around bulk billing and general practice. I'm in a terrific discussion, not just with the College, but with the other organisations here, about what else we can do to strengthen Medicare. Because the Prime Minister and I have said that, although what we have done has made a meaningful difference, of course there is more to do. Thank you.